“The TRUly Flexible initiative has been described as the introduction of a “continuum” of delivery options between asynchronous and classroom-based learning and was intended to provide students with more flexible learning options.” Castanet September 30, 2025

Thompson Rivers University (TRU) is encouraging faculty to offer courses in a TRUly Flexible format instead of just on campus. TRUly is a play on the  words “truly” and “TRU”. There may be a variety of TRUly Flexible options but for now it means that students will be provided with more blended learning options (i.e., courses that have both online and in person elements). The flipped classroom is a form of blended learning. In the flipped classroom the lectures are recorded on video usually available online through the Internet, and students meet face-to-face for active learning in class (Sparkes, 2019).

This resource is the result of a short sabbatical and the basis of a presentation “TRUly Flexible (Flipped) Learning: An evidence-based resource” at International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) conference in Wellington, New Zealand, November, 2025. The presentation slides (PDF) and the slides with my speaker notes (PDF) are available for a quick overview. Presentations were restricted to four slides including the title slide. The presentation provides an introduction to the topic and the thinking process that moved from reviewing more comparison literature, to looking at the latest 1st and 2nd order meta-analyses, including my own PhD dissertation, and ultimately to using the underlying cognitive processes of learning to explain how instructors can use them in the flipped classroom to help students learn.

Continue reading for a scenario, purpose and learning outcomes.

Scenario

Imagine an instructor asks you, as a colleague or instructional support faculty, for evidence-based resources to help guide their decisions on how to effectively design and teach their on-campus course in a TRUly Flexible approach. They are overwhelmed with teaching options that promise the next great learning breakthrough but want to know what really matters for learning to take place. This resource is designed to address this scenario.

Purpose

This resource is for you to make your campus course more flexible. This flexible classroom toolkit will introduce evidence-based approaches to improve learning. While examples may use the flipped classroom approach, these cognitive approaches to learning are relevant to any educational situation. Maybe you already use these approaches. Learning about the evidence-based research can help you feel more prepared when justifying your pedagogical decisions to yourself or others. Explaining the reason behind your approaches can help your students understand how they learn as well.

Learning Outcomes

After reading this resource, you should be able to:

• Describe three main cognitive processes by which students learn.
• Explain how these cognitive processes can guide your decisions when designing a flexible flipped classroom approach.

Note: Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This Creative Commons license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon our work non-commercially, as long as they credit us and indicate if changes were made.

Use this citation format: The Truly Flexible (Flipped) Toolkit by Carol Sparkes is licensed under CC BY 4.0.